§ Since 1971

The yardstick shrank.

Wages did not stagnate. The unit of measure shrank.

In 1913 a US dollar bought an ounce of silver. In 2026 it buys one fortieth of one. This is not an accident, not a market outcome, and not a side effect. It is the documented working mechanism of the financial system that has run since the Federal Reserve Act passed on 23 December 1913.

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Every number on this site cites a primary source. No analytics, no tracking, no cookies. Read the editorial stance.

How to read this site

1. The history

Six anchored dates. 1815, the start of a hundred years of stable money. 1913, the door closed. 1933, gold confiscated. 1944, the dollar pyramid. 1971, the cut. 2008 to 2022, the late stage.

Walk the timeline →

2. The mechanism

How banks create money out of nothing (the Bank of England said so in 2014). How new money reaches asset holders first (Cantillon, 1730). How the inflation tax and bracket creep extract from the rest.

See the working parts →

3. What was lost

The same hour of median labour now buys nine times less gold than in 1971, half the housing, a fraction of the education and healthcare. Two earners do what one earner used to do.

Count the cost →

4. The actors

The Federal Reserve. The European Central Bank. The Bank for International Settlements. The IMF. Named institutions, dated decisions, public minutes. No conspiracy. Public coordination is sufficient.

Meet the network →

One sentence per turning point.

The financial system did not arrive in one piece. It was built. Six dates explain how. Each one is a dated event in a public record, with a primary source.

  1. 1815

    Classical gold standard begins

    For the next 98 years, the UK general price level falls. UK CPI in 1913 sits 23 percent below 1815.

    Read the full account →
  2. 1913

    The door closes

    In a single year, the United States ratifies both the 16th Amendment (income tax, February) and the Federal Reserve Act (December 23). Two halves of one mechanism.

    Read the full account →
  3. 1923

    Weimar mark dies

    A wheelbarrow of marks buys one loaf of bread. The Reichsbank monetised reparations. 4.2 trillion marks per dollar by November.

    Read the full account →
  4. 1933

    Gold confiscated

    Executive Order 6102, 5 April 1933. Americans surrender gold to the Federal Reserve at $20.67 per ounce. The state then revalues to $35. The expropriation is legal.

    Read the full account →
  5. 1944

    The dollar pyramid

    Bretton Woods. Dollars promise gold; other currencies promise dollars. Triffin warns the structure cannot hold. He is correct.

    Read the full account →
  6. 1971

    The cut

    Sunday, 9pm, 15 August. Nixon: "I have directed Secretary Connally to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold." Temporary has lasted 55 years.

    Read the full account →
  7. 2008

    QE becomes permanent

    Lehman fails. The Fed balance sheet quadruples to $4.5 trillion in six years. It has not retraced since. GAO audit 2011: $16 trillion in emergency loans, mostly to non-US institutions.

    Read the full account →
  8. 2020

    40 percent in 26 months

    M2 grows 40.4% from February 2020 to April 2022. The largest peacetime monetary expansion in US history. CPI peaks at 9.1 percent in June 2022, on schedule.

    Read the full account →
  9. 2026

    Programmable money arrives

    130+ jurisdictions explore CBDCs. Three already live (Bahamas, Nigeria, Jamaica). The eurozone, UK, India in advanced design. The last buffer thins.

    Read the full account →

The press doesn't stop. The dollar shrinks.

This is what "money printer go brrr" actually looks like. Every dollar that leaves the press makes every existing dollar buy slightly less. Scroll. The real numbers come from the Federal Reserve's M2 series.

YEAR 1971
US MONEY SUPPLY (M2) $685 B
$1 BUYS 100% of what it bought in 1971
What you see. A printing press. A pile of dollar bills growing on the floor. A gold coin on the right that shrinks as more bills print. That's it. That's the whole mechanism.
Why it shrinks. A dollar is a share in the total pile of dollars. Doubling the pile cuts each share in half. More dollars chasing the same loaves of bread, hours of work, ounces of gold means each dollar buys less of them.
The numbers. US M2 grew from $0.69 trillion in 1971 to $22.7 trillion in 2026. That is a 33 fold expansion in 55 years. The press did not stop. How the press actually works →

One number to keep in mind.

~97%

Loss of purchasing power of the US dollar between 1913 and 2026, measured by the BLS Consumer Price Index. Roughly 99% measured against gold. The dollar of your great grandparents bought, in real terms, thirty to one hundred times more goods than the dollar in your wallet today.

Sources: BLS Inflation Calculator, FRED M2SL, World Gold Council.

What the median household lost.

Wages did not stagnate. The unit of measure shrank. The same hour of median labour buys less of every essential thing today than it did in 1971. These are not opinions. They are time to buy ratios calculated from primary data, with sources beneath each card.

Hours of median work to buy 1 oz of gold

1971 9.9
2026 93
9.4× more

You work nine times longer for the same ounce.

Source: LBMA gold AM fix; BLS median hourly earnings.

Years of median household income for a median home

1971 ~2.8
2024 ~5.1
1.8× more

A median home now consumes more than five years of household income, before tax.

Source: Census MSPUS; Atlanta Fed Affordability Monitor; JCHS Harvard.

Years of median income for a 4 year degree (public, in state)

1971 0.60
2024 1.24
2.1× more

Twice the years of work for the same diploma.

Source: NCES Digest of Education Statistics; Census P 60.

Health care spending per capita as % of median income

1971 4.3%
2024 18.1%
4.2× more

Health care alone now eats one in six of every dollar earned.

Source: CMS National Health Expenditure data; Census P 60.

Full method, every series, every download URL: see the knowledge base entry.

The two lines that explain everything

On the same axes, indexed to 1959 = 100. Money supply (M2) versus what one dollar can buy. They move in opposite directions, and they have not stopped. Three vertical lines mark the inflection points: 1971 (gold window closes), 2008 (Lehman, QE begins), 2020 (zero rates, $5T stimulus).

Sources: FRED CPIAUCSL and FRED M2SL. Log scale on the vertical axis. Data fetched from FRED's public CSV endpoint and embedded statically.

Built on primary data

Every chart on this site is rendered from a primary source. The knowledge base lists each source with a working link. Verify anything that surprises you.